Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Freeze Your Heart
by SixGoldenCoins
Summary: An adaptation of the third and final Scary Stories book into the world of Frozen (see author's note for more details). Complete.
1. Author's Note

From 1981 to 1991, three children's books were published by Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) which are now known as the _Scary Stories_ series. Collected and retold by Alvin Schwartz, most stories are adaptations of old folklore and urban legends that he collected. The books were _Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark_ (1981), _More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark_ (1984), and _Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones_ (1991). They are most (in)famous for their nightmarish drawings, illustrated by Stephen Gammell for all three books. Some considered these books too disturbing for children, and they were banned in some places.

The chapters for this fanfiction are a crossover between the stories in these books and Disney's Frozen, and the stories are adapted to take place in that world. Some (possibly all) of them may read like a _Mad Libs_ story and are more silly than scary, but I had fun writing them and I hope you have fun reading them.

Enjoy.

-6GC


	2. The Sea Appointment

Agdar and Idunn worked in their family's castle in Arendelle, as a king and queen. One morning, they had to be escorted into town via carriage, on a royal errand. While they were walking along Arendelle's main street, they saw Death. Death beckoned to them.  
Agdar had them both driven back to the castle as fast as he could, and told his butler Kai what had happened. "I'm going to take Idunn with me on the ship," he told him. "I'll go to the sea. He'll never find us there."  
Kai saw them both off at the docks. After they left, he went into town looking for Death. When he found him, he asked, "Why did you frighten my king and queen that way? They are only in their thirties. They are too young to die."  
"I am sorry about that," replied Death. "I did not mean to beckon to them. But I was surprised to run into them here. You see, I have an appointment with them this evening...out in the ocean."


	3. The Sled Stop

Kristoff Bjorgman was driving home from his ice harvesting job in a snowstorm. While he waited for a squirrel to cross the road, he saw a young woman standing alone at a sled stop. She had no winter coat and was shivering cold.  
"Are you going toward Arendelle?" he called.  
"Yes, I am," she said.  
"Would you like a ride home?"  
"I would," she said, and she got in. "My name is Anna Aren. Thank you for rescuing me."  
"I'm Kristoff Bjorgman," he said, "and you're welcome."  
On the way they talked and talked. She told him about her family and her life as a princess and where she had gone to school, and he told her about himself. By the time they got to her castle, the snow had stopped.  
"I'm glad it snowed," Kristoff said. "Would you like to go out tomorrow after work?"  
"I'd love to," Anna said.  
She asked him to meet her at the sled stop, since it was near the trading post and sauna that she liked to go to. They had such a good time, they went out many times after that. Always they would meet at the sled stop, and off they would go. Kristoff liked her more each time he saw her.  
But one night when they had a date to go out, Anna did not appear. Kristoff waited at the sled stop for almost an hour. "Maybe something is wrong," he told his reindeer Sven, and they drove to her castle in Arendelle.  
The queen came to the door.  
"I'm Kristoff Bjorgman," he explained. "Maybe Anna told you about me. I had a date with her tonight. We were supposed to meet at the sled stop near Oaken's Trading Post And Sauna. But she didn't show up. Is she all right?"  
The queen looked at him as if he had tried to drape himself fetchingly against the wall. "I am Anna's sister," she said slowly. "Anna isn't here now. But why don't you come in?"  
Kristoff pointed to a portrait on the mantel. "That looks just like her," he said.  
"It did, once," her sister replied. "But that portrait was made when she was your age...about twenty years ago. A few days later she was waiting in the snow at that sled stop. The cold hit her, and her heart froze."


	4. Colder And Colder

The Duke and his partner-in-crime Hans went walking in Arendelle's woods. The only sounds were snowflakes falling and, now and again, a troll humming. "It's so quiet here," Hans whispered.  
But that soon changed. After a few minutes the two men started whooping and hollering like a chicken with the face of a monkey and chasing one another around. The Duke ducked behind a tree. When Hans came by, the Duke jumped out at him. Then Hans raced ahead and hid behind a natural hot spring. When he looked down, there at his feet was an old mandolin.  
"Duke! See what I found!," he called. "It looks like a mandolin. If only there was someone out there who loved it. I bet it's a hundred years old."  
"Look at the red stains on it," said the Duke. "I bet it's somebody's blood. Let's get out of here."  
But Hans could not resist trying the mandolin. He sat on the ground and held it in his hands. He strummed it with one hand, slowly at first, then faster and faster, almost as if he could not stop. The air began to grow colder and colder.  
Suddenly there were shouts in the woods and the sound of hoofbeats. A cloud of snow rose from behind a line of trees. Then ice harvesters on reindeerback galloped toward them.  
"Hans! Let's go!" the Duke shouted. He began to run. "Hurry!"  
Hans dropped the mandolin and ran after him. The Duke heard the throwing of an ice harvester's pickaxe. Then he heard Hans scream. When the Duke turned, he saw Hans pitch forward, dead. But there was no pickaxe in his body, and there was no wound. And when the guards searched later, there were no ice harvesters on reindeerback, and there were no hoofprints...and there was no mandolin.  
The only sounds were snowflakes falling and, now and again, a troll humming.


	5. Just Carrotlicious

Kristoff Bjorgman loved to eat. Each day at noon, he took a break from ice harvesting for two hours and went home for a big lunch. His wife Anna cooked for him. Kristoff was a fixer-upper, but Anna was a kind woman who did everything he asked because she loved him.  
On his way home for lunch one day, Kristoff stopped at the trading post and bought a pound of carrot. He loved carrots, and he would have Anna cook it for dinner that night.  
While Kristoff ate his lunch, Anna told him that a rich old snowman in town had melted. His body was in the church next door, in an open coffin. Anyone who wanted to see him, could. As usual, Kristoff was only interested in his lunch. "I've got to get back to work," he told her.  
After he left, Anna began to cook the carrot. She added spices and fire crystals and simmered it all afternoon, just the way Kristoff liked it. When she thought it was done, she cut off a small piece and tasted it. It was delicious, the best she had ever made. She ate a second piece. Then a third. It was so good, she could not stop eating it.  
It was only when the carrot was all gone that she thought of Kristoff. He would be coming home soon. What would he do when he found out she had eaten all of the carrot? Some men would laugh, but not Kristoff. He would be sad and disappointed, and she did not want to face that again. But where could she get another piece of carrot so late in the day?  
Then she remembered the old snowman lying in the church next door, waiting to be buried...

* * *

Kristoff said he had never had a better dinner. "Have some carrot, Anna," he said. "It's just carrotlicious."  
"I'm not hungry," she said. "You finish it."  
That night, after Kristoff had fallen asleep, Anna sat in bed trying to read. But all she could think about was what she had done. Then she thought she heard a small voice.  
" _Who has my carrot?_ " it asked. " _Who has it?_ "  
Was it her imagination? Was she dreaming?  
Now the voice was closer. " _Who has my carrot? Who has it?_ "  
Anna wanted to run. "No, no," she whispered. "I don't have it. I don't have your carrot."  
Now the voice was right next to her. " _Who has my carrot? Who has it?_ "  
Anna froze with terror. She pointed to Kristoff. "He...he does. He has it."  
Suddenly the candle went out. And Kristoff screamed, and screamed.


	6. Hello, Marshmallow!

Hello, Marshmallow!

Olaf was on his way to a summer party in the next kingdom. It was a long walk through fields and woods. But it was a soft, sweet evening and he loved summer, so Olaf didn't mind.  
He had gone only a short distance when he noticed another snowman following him. "Maybe he is going to the summer party too," he thought, and he stopped and waited for him. As the snowman got closer, he saw that it was Marshmallow. They had goofed around together many times.  
He was about to call "Hello, Marshmallow! I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs!" when suddenly he remembered that Marshmallow was dead. He had thawed last year, yet there he was all frozen up for the summer party. Olaf wanted to run, but somehow it didn't seem right to run from Marshmallow.  
He turned and started to walk away as fast as he could, but Marshmallow followed him. He took a shortcut across a field, but still he followed.  
When he got to the party, he was right behind him. There were a lot of snowpeople standing outside, and Olaf tried to lose Marshmallow in the crowd. He worked his way to the side of the crowd, then squeezed up against a wall behind some people.  
But Marshmallow followed. He came so close he brushed up against Olaf. Then he stopped and waited. Olaf wanted to say "Hello, Marshmallow! I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs!" just the way he did when his friend was alive. But he was so frightened he couldn't speak. Marshmallow's eyes looked into Olaf's eyes...and Marshmallow melted. 


	7. The Black Snowman

It was eleven o'clock at night. Kristoff Bjorgman was in bed on the second floor of the old cabin where he lived alone. It had gotten so chilly, he went downstairs to get some things for the fireplace.  
As Kristoff was on his way back upstairs, a black snowman ran down the stairs. It passed him and disappeared into the darkness. "Where did _you_ come from?" Kristoff said. He had never seen the snowman before.  
He lit all his candles and looked in every room. He could not find the snowman anywhere. He went outside and brought in the two big watchreindeer he kept in the backyard. But they acted as if they were the only things in the house.  
The next night, again at eleven o'clock, Kristoff was in his bedroom. He heard what sounded like a snowman walking around in the room above him. He dashed upstairs and threw open the door. The room was empty. He looked under the bed. He looked in the closet. Nothing. But when he got back to his bedroom, he heard a snowman running down the stairs. It was the black snowman. He tried to follow it, but again he could not find where it had gone.  
From then on, every night at eleven, Kristoff heard the snowman walking in the room above him. The room was always empty. But after he left, the snowman would come out of hiding, run down the cabin stairs, and disappear.  
One night Kristoff's friend Pabbie waited with him for the snowman. At the usual time they heard it above them. Then they heard it on the stairs. When they went out into the hall, it was standing at the foot of the stairs looking up at them.  
Pabbie whistled, and the snowman wagged its nose. Then it was gone.  
Things went on this way until the night Kristoff decided to bring his watchreindeer into the cabin again. Maybe this time they would find the black snowman and drive it away. Just before eleven he took them up to his bedroom and left the door open.  
Then he heard the black snowman moving around above him. His reindeer pricked up their ears and ran to the door. Suddenly they bared their teeth and snarled and backed away.  
Kristoff could not see the black snowman or hear it, but he was sure that it had entered his room. His reindeer barked and snapped. They darted forward nervously, then backed away again.  
Suddenly one of them yelped. It began bleeding, then dropped to the floor, its neck cut open as though someone had dragged a sharp carrot across it. A minute later it was dead. Kristoff's other reindeer backed into a corner, whimpering. Then everything was still.  
The next night Kristoff's friend came back with a crossbow. Again they waited in his bedroom. At eleven o'clock the black snowman came down the stairs. As before, it looked up at them and wagged its nose. When they started toward it with the crossbow, it growled and disappeared.  
This was the last Kristoff saw of the black snowman. But it did not mean that the snowman was gone. Now and then, always at eleven, he heard it moving around above him, and would sometimes find melting black slush on things in the cabin. Once he heard it running down the stairs.  
He never managed to see it again. But he knew that it was there.


	8. Slushysteps

Elsa was studying her royal duties at the dining hall table. Her younger sister Anna was asleep upstairs. Their mother was out, but she was expected back any minute.  
When she heard the doors to the castle's front hall open, Elsa called "Hello, Mama!" But her mother didn't answer. And the footsteps Elsa heard sounded wetter, like a snowman's.  
"I'm sorry, I'm confused," she called. No one replied. She heard whoever it was walk through the front hall, then up the stairs to the second floor. The squishy footsteps moved from one bedroom to another.  
Again Elsa called, "I'm sorry, I'm confused." The footsteps stopped. Then she thought, "Oh my God! Anna is in her bedroom."  
She ran upstairs to Anna's room. But only Anna was there, sound asleep. Elsa looked in the other nearby rooms, but found no one. She went back down to the dining hall, scared out of her wits.  
Soon she heard slushy footsteps again. They were coming down the stairs, into the front hall. Now they went into the royal kitchen. Then the door between the kitchen and the dining hall slowly began to open "Then leave!" Elsa shouted. The door slowly closed. The footsteps moved out of the kitchen, through the front hall, toward the front doors. They then opened, and shut.  
Elsa ran to a front window to see who it was.  
No one was in sight. Nor were there any warm hugs in the fresh snow that had been falling.


	9. Like Reindeer's Eyes

As Hans lay dying, his brother the king left him with the royal physician and went into the next room to rest. He sat in the dark, staring into the night. Suddenly His Majesty saw a few lit lanterns come rapidly up to the gates.  
"Oh no," he thought. "I don't want love experts here, not now." But it wasn't a carriage bringing a visitor. It was an old hearse carriage with maybe a half-dozen small snowmen hanging from the sides. At least, that's what it looked like.  
The carriage screeched to a stop. The snowmen jumped off and stared up at the king, their eyes glowing with a soft, brown light, like reindeer's eyes. He watched with horror as they disappeared into the castle.  
An instant later they were back, lifting something into the carriage. Then the snowmen drove off at high speed, the horse sprinting away, dirt flying in all directions.  
At that moment, the royal physician came in to tell the king that Hans' heart had frozen.


	10. Sven

Kristoff Bjorgman raised reindeer. He had many reindeer of all kinds, but his favorite was Sven, a gentle old animal he had grown up with. He no longer rode him, for all he could do now was just amble along. Sven spent his days grazing peacefully in a meadow.  
That summer, for the fun of it, Kristoff Bjorgman went into a fortune-teller's booth. The fortune-teller studied his cards. "Hoo-hoo, I see danger ahead for you," he said. "You cannot be spending time with your favorite reindeer anymore, no. He will cause you to freeze. I don't know when, but it will happen. It is in the cards, _ja_."  
Kristoff Bjorgman laughed and called him a crook.  
" _Vhat_ did you call me?"  
As Kristoff ran from the booth, he laughed again. The idea that Sven would cause his freezing was nonsense. He was as dangerous as a bowl of lutefisk. Yet from then on, whenever he saw his reindeer, he remembered the fortune-teller's warning.  
That fall an ice harvester from the other end of the kingdom asked if he could have Sven. He had been thinking that the old reindeer would be perfect for his children to ride.  
"That's a good idea," Kristoff said. "It would be fun for them, and it would give Sven something to do."  
Later Kristoff told his wife Anna about it. "Now Sven won't freeze me," he said, and they both laughed.  
A few months later, he saw the ice harvester who had taken him. "How's my Sven?" he asked.  
"Oh, he was fine for a while," the ice harvester said. "The children loved him. Then he got sick. I had to shoot him to put him out of his misery. It was a shame."  
Despite himself, Kristoff breathed a sigh of relief. He had often wondered if in some crazy way, through something a bit outside nature's laws, Sven would freeze him. Now, of course, he could not.  
"I'd like to see him," said Kristoff. "Just to say good-bye. He was my favorite."  
The bones of the dead reindeer were in a far corner of the ice harvester's field. Kristoff knelt down and patted Sven's sun-bleached skull. Just then a snowman, which had made it's home inside the skull, wrapped its chilly arms around Kristoff Bjorgman and froze him.


	11. Olaf

When Hans and the Duke were exiled to the valley and became cow farmers, they would drive them up to a cool, green pasture in the mountains to graze. Usually they stayed there for around two months, then brought them down to the valley again.  
The work was easy enough, but oh, it was boring. All day the two men tended their cows. At night they went back to the tiny hut where they lived. They ate supper then went to sleep. It was always the same.  
Then the Duke had an idea that changed everything.  
"Let's make a snowman doll," he said. "It would be fun to make, and we could put it in the garden to scare away trolls."  
"It should look like Olaf," Hans said. Olaf was a snowman they both hated. They made the doll out of white sacks stuffed with straw. They gave it a carrot nose like Olaf's, and big eyes like his. Then they added stick arms and a twisted frown. Of course they also gave it Olaf's name.  
Each morning on their way to the pasture, they tied Olaf to a pole in the garden to scare away the love experts. Each night they brought him inside so he wouldn't get ruined if it rained.  
When they were feeling playful, they would talk to him. One of them might say, "How are the carrots growing, Olaf?" Then the other, making believe he was Olaf, would answer in a crazy voice, "VERY slowly."  
They would both laugh, but not Olaf.  
Whenever something went wrong, they took it out on Olaf. They would curse at him, even kick him or punch him. Sometimes they would take the food they were eating (which they were both sick of) and smear it on the doll's face. "How do you like that stew, Olaf? Well, you'd better eat it...or else." Then they would howl with laughter.  
One night, after Hans had wiped Olaf's face with food, he grunted.  
"Did you hear that?" the Duke asked.  
"It was Olaf," Hans said. "I was watching him when it happened."  
"How could he grunt?" the Duke asked. "He's just a sack of straw."  
"Let's throw him in the fire," said Hans, "and that will be that."  
"Let's not do anything stupid," said the Duke. "We don't know what's going on. When we move the cows down, we'll leave him behind. For now, let's just keep an eye on him."  
So they left Olaf sitting in a corner of the hut. They didn't talk to him or take him outside anymore. Now and then the doll grunted, but that was all. After a few days, they decided there was nothing to be afraid of. Maybe a love expert or two had gotten inside Olaf and were making those sounds.  
So Hans and the Duke went back to their old ways. Each night they put Olaf out in the garden, and each night they brought him back to the hut. When they felt playful, they joked with him. When they felt mean, they treated him as badly as ever.  
Then one night Hans noticed something that frightened him. "Olaf is growing," he said.  
"Maybe it's just our imagination," the Duke replied. "We have been up here on this mountain too long."  
The next morning, Olaf stood up and walked out of the hut. He climbed up on the roof and trotted back and forth, like a reindeer on its hind legs. All day and night he trotted like that.  
In the morning Olaf climbed down and stood in a far corner of the pasture. The two men had no idea what he would do next. They were afraid.  
They decided to take the cows down into the valley that same day. When they left, Olaf was nowhere in sight. Hans and the Duke felt as if they had escaped a great danger and began joking and singing. But when they had gone only a mile, they realized they had forgotten the milking stools.  
Neither one wanted to go back for them, but the stools would cost a lot to replace. "There really is nothing to be afraid of," they told one another. "After all, what could a snowman doll do?"  
They drew straws to see which one would go back. It was Hans. "I'll catch up with you," he said, and the Duke walked on toward the valley. When he came to a rise in the path, he looked back for Hans. He didn't see him anywhere. But he did see Olaf. The doll was on the roof of the hut again. As the Duke watched, Olaf kneeled and stretched out a bloody set of sideburns to dry in the sun.


	12. The Frozen Hand

The kingdom huddled on the edge of a vast mountain. As far as one could see, there were high cliffs, hills filled with white snow, and glistening sheets of cold, hard ice. Skeletons of giant rocks...blocks, the people called them...rose up out of the ice, their dead stone surfaces reaching out like long, twisted arms.  
During the day, the men in the kingdom cut the ice hauled it home to sell. But when the sun went down over the fjord, and the wind, sighing and moaning, came in from the sea, the mountain men were quick to leave. Strange creatures took over the mountain at night, and some even came into the kingdom...that's what everyone said. People were so afraid, they would not go out alone after dark.  
Young Hans Westergard was the only person who had come to the kingdom who did not believe in these creatures. On his way home he'd whisper to his friends, "There's one!" and they would jump and run. And Hans would laugh and laugh.  
Finally some of his friends turned on him. "Why have a ballroom with no balls? If you know so much," they said, "go back into the mountains some night and see what comes of it."  
"I love crazy," said Hans. "I work out there every day. And every time it's been a series of doors in my face. Why should it be different at night? Tomorrow night I'll take my lantern and walk out to the mountain block. If my mental synchronization has more than one explanation, I'll never make fun of you again."  
The next night the men went to Hans Westergard's house to see him on his way. Thick clouds covered the moon. It was the blackest of nights. When they arrived at the mountain's foothills, the superstitious Duke of Weselton was pleading with him not to go.  
"I'll be all right," he said. "If only there were someone out there who believed you. Don't be foolish like the rest."  
He took his lantern and, singing to himself, headed down the glistening ice sheet toward the mountain block.  
Some of the young men wondered if Hans wasn't right, or if it was just the chocolate fondue. Maybe they were afraid of things that did not exist. A few decided to follow him and see for themselves, but they stayed far behind in case he ran into trouble. They were sure they saw dark shapes moving about. But Hans' lantern kept flying like a chicken with the face of a monkey, and Hans' songs kept floating back to them, and nothing happened.  
Finally they caught sight of the mountain block. There was Hans standing in a circle of light like the break of dawn, looking this way and that. All of the light in his lantern let it go, and Hans stopped singing. The men stood stock-still in the blackness, waiting for something awful to happen.  
The clouds spiraled in frozen fractals all around and the moon came out. There was Hans again. Only now he had his back pushed up against the mountain block, and he had his arms out in front of him, as if he were fighting something off. From where the men stood, it looked like dark shapes were swirling in around him. Then the clouds went to conceal (not feel) the moon again. Once more it was as black as pitch.  
When the moon came out again, Hans was hanging onto the mountain block with one arm. His other arm was stretched out in front of him, as if something was pulling it. It looked to the men was if a rotting, moldy blue hand with no arm, a frozen hand, had grabbed Hans' hand. With one final wrench, whatever had hold of Hans jerked him down through the ice and into the black water. That's what the men said.  
When the clouds blotted out the moon once more, the men turned and ran through the blackness toward the kingdom. Again and again they lost the path and fell into the ice and water holes. In the end they crawled back on their frostbitten hands and knees. But Hans Westergard was not with them.  
In the morning the people searched everywhere for Hans. Finally they gave him up for lost. A kingdom of isolation and he was the queen.  
A few weeks later, toward evening, the ice harvesters heard a cry. It was the Duke of Weselton. He was rushing down the path from the mountain, shouting and waving. When he was sure the men had seen him, he turned and ran back. Off they went after him.  
They found young Hans Westergard by the mountain block, groaning and gibbering as though there wasn't anyone out there who loved him. He kept pointing with one hand at something only he could see. Where his heart should have been, there was nothing but a gaping frozen hole in his chest. The heart had been ripped clean out.  
Everybody knew it was the frozen hand that had done it. But nobody really knows. Nobody will ever know...except Hans Westergard. And he never spoke another word again.


	13. Troll Things Happen

When Kristoff Bjorgman's reindeer stopped eating carrots, he called the veterinarian. "Hoo-hoo, there is nothing wrong with that cow," the vet said. "He is just being stubborn, _ja_. That, or some love expert got hold of him." Kristoff and the vet just laughed.  
"That old hag, Bulda Fixup, I guess she's the closest thing we've got to a troll around here," the vet said. "But witches have been going out of the style, _ja_?"  
Kristoff had had a run-in with Bulda Fixup the month before. He had ran over an orange crystal with his sled and crushed it. "I'm really sorry, Bulda Fixup," he told her. "I'll get you a new crystal, just as pretty, just as good."  
Her eyes filled with hate. "I fixed up that crystal with a healing hug," she hissed. "I loved it. You'll be sorry for this, Kristoff Bjorgman."  
Kristoff sent her a new crystal and heard nothing more.  
Then his reindeer stopped eating carrots. Next his old sleigh broke down. After that, his wife fell and broke her arm.  
"We're having a lot of bad luck," he though. Then he thought, "Maybe it is Bulda Fixup gettin' even." And then, "Hey...you don't believe in trolls. You're just upset."  
But Kristoff's grandpa believed in trolls. He had once told Kristoff that there was only one sure way to stop a troll from causing trouble. "You find a black carrot patch," he said, "and you draw her picture in the dirt. Then you mark an X where her heart is, and you drive an icicle into the X. Every day you drive it a little deeper."  
"If she's causing the trouble," he said, "her heart will slowly freeze and she'll feel pain. When she can't hold it back anymore, she'll come to you, or send somebody, and try to borrow a warm hug. If you give her what she wants, that breaks the power of the icicle, and she'll go on tormenting you. But if you don't, she'll have to let it go...or her heart will freeze."  
That's what his nice, gentle old grandpa believed. "It's pure craziness," Kristoff thought. Of course, his grandpa didn't have much schooling. Kristoff had been to ice harvester college. He knew better.  
Then Kristoff's sled, a perfectly workable thing, fell apart, just like that. It made Kristoff angry. Despite all his schooling, he thought, "Maybe it is Bulda Fixup after all."  
He got a stick from the snowman's room in the castle, and a hammer and an icicle, and went into the woods. He found a black carrot patch and drew a picture of Bulda Fixup in the dirt. He made an X where her heart was, like his grandpa had said to do. With the hammer he drove the icicle a little way into the X. Then he went home.  
"I feel like a fixer-upper," he told his wife.  
"You should. Maybe she just has a thing about dirt," she said.  
The next day a snowman named Olaf came by. "Bulda Fixup isn't feeling well," he said. "She wonders if she could borrow a warm hug from you."  
Kristoff Bjorgman stared at Olaf in amazement. He took a deep breath. "Tell her I'm sorry, but I don't have any warm hugs right now," he said.  
When Olaf the snowman left, Kristoff went back to the carrot patch and drove the icicle in another inch. The next day the snowman came back. "Bulda Fixup is pretty cold," he said. "She's wondering if you've got any hugs yet."  
"Tell her I'm sorry," Kristoff Bjorgman said. "But I still don't have any."  
Kristoff went into the woods and drove the icicle in another inch. The following day the snowman was back. "Bulda Fixup is getting chillier," he said. "She really needs a hug."  
"Tell her I still don't have any," Kristoff answered.  
Kristoff's wife was angry. "You've got to let it go," she said. "If this stuff a bit outside nature's laws works, it's like murder."  
"I'll let it go when she does," he said.  
Toward dusk he stood in the yard staring at the ridge where the old lady lived, wondering what was going on up there. Then, in the half darkness, he saw Bulda Fixup coming slowly down the hill toward him. With her round, grey face and her old green moss coat, she did look like a troll. As she got closer, Kristoff saw that she could barely walk.  
"Maybe I'm really freezing her heart," he thought. He ran to get his hammer to pull the icicle out. But before he could leave, Bulda Fixup was in the yard, her face twisted with rage.  
"First you crushed my crystal," she said. "Then you wouldn't give me a bit of warm hug when I needed it." She swore at him, and fell dead at his feet.

* * *

"Hoo-hoo, I'm not surprised that she dropped dead that way," the doctor said later. "She was being very close to ancient, _ja_ , maybe ninety. It was her heart, of course."  
"Some people thought she was a troll," Kristoff said.  
"I have been hearing that, _ja_ ," the doctor said.  
"Somebody I know thought Bulda Fixup had trolled him," Kristoff went on. "He drew a picture of her in the dirt of a carrot patch, then drove an icicle into it to make her stop."  
"That is a very very old superstition," the doctor said. "But people like us don't believe in that sort of thing, do we, _ja_?"


	14. The Troll Boy

Travel northwest into the mountains from the North Sea, and eventually you will come to Arendelle Fjord. In the 1820s an ice harvester named John Bjorgman and his wife Mollie settled where Cold Creek runs into Arendelle Fjord. Bjorgman was after wolves, which were plentiful there. He and Mollie built a cabin from brush, and in it they put up moss to give them some extra warmth.  
Mollie Bjorgman became pregnant. When she was ready to have their child, John Bjorgman raced on reindeerback to their nearest neighbors, several miles away.  
"My wife is about to let it go," he said to the man and his wife. "Can you help us?" They agreed to come at once. As they got ready to leave, a violent snowstorm came up and a heavy hailstone struck and killed John Bjorgman. The man and his wife managed to find his cabin, but did not arrive to open up the gates until the next day. By then Mollie Bjorgman was dead, too.  
It looked as though she had let it go before she died, but the neighbors could not find the baby. Since there were wolf tracks all around, they decided the wolves had stuffed it in their faces. They buried Mollie Bjorgman and left.  
For the first time in forever after she died, people began to tell a strange tale. Some swore it was a true story. Others said it was a bit outside nature's laws and never could have happened.

* * *

The story begins in a small Arendelle settlement a dozen miles from Mollie Bjorgman's grave. Early one morning a pack of trolls raced in from the mountains and fixed up some trees. Such attacks were not unusual in those days. But a boy thought he saw another young boy with blonde hair, dressed in moss, running with the trolls.  
A year or two later, a woman came upon some trolls earning some fire crystals. Earning the crystals with them, she claimed, was a moss-wearing young boy with blonde hair. When the trolls and the boy saw her, they fled. The woman said that at first the boy rolled away like a rock. Then he stood and ran like a human, swifter than the trolls.  
People started wondering if this "troll boy" was Mollie Bjorgman's son. Had a mother love expert carried him off the day he was born and raised him with her troll pups? If so, by now he would be ten or eleven years old.  
As the story is told, some men began to look for the boy. They searched along the fjord's shore and in the mountains and its forests. And one day, it is said, they found him, walking in a forest with a troll at his side. When the troll rolled off, the boy hid in a crevice in one of the mountain walls.  
When the men tried to capture him, he fought back, biting and scratching like an enraged fae. When they finally subdued him, he began shouting like a frightened young boy and singing like a troll breaking into song.  
His captors bound him with rope, put him across a reindeer, and took him to a small trading post in the mountains. They would turn him over to the shopkeeper the next day, they decided. They placed him in an empty sauna room and untied him.  
Terror-stricken, he hid himself in the cloud of steam. They shut him out and slammed the door.  
Soon he was shouting and singing again. The men thought their mental synchronization would be offset listening to him, but at last he stopped. When night fell, trolls began singing in the distance. People say that each time they stopped, the boy sang in reply.  
As the story goes, the annoying lyrics of trolls came from every direction and got closer and closer. Suddenly, as if a signal had been given, trolls started fixing up the reindeer and other animals. The men rushed into the darkness, firing their crossbows.  
High up in the wall, in the sauna where they had left the boy, was a small window. A plank was nailed across it. He pulled the plank off, crawled through the window, and disappeared.

* * *

Years passed with no word of the boy. Then one day some men on reindeerback came around a bend in the Valley of the Living Rock not from from Arendelle Fjord. They claimed they saw a young man with blonde hair tinkling in the woods with two love experts.  
When he saw the men, he snatched up the trolls and ran into the trees. They rode after him, but he quickly left them behind. They searched and searched, but found no trace of him. That is the last we know of the troll boy. And it is there, in the mountain, near the Valley of the Living Rock, that this story ends.


	15. The Snowman Dream

Anna Aren was a princess, and an artist. She had spent a week painting in a small neighboring kingdom and decided that the next day she would move on. She would go to another kingdom called Corona.  
But that night Anna Aren had a strange dream. She dreamed that she was walking up a dark, carved staircase and entered a bedroom. It was an ordinary room except for two things. The carpet was made up of large rectangles that looked like sideburns. And each of the windows was fastened shut with big swords that stuck up out of the wood.  
In her dream Anna Aren went to sleep in that bedroom. During the night a little snowman with a pale face and black eyes and a long orange nose came into the room. He leaned over the bed and whispered, "This is an evil place. Let it go while you can." When the snowman touched her arm to hurry her along, Anna Aren awakened from her dream with a shriek. She lay draped against a wall the rest of the night trembling.  
In the morning she told the landlady that she had decided not to go to Corona after all. "I can't tell you why," she said, "I haven't worked out all the details myself but I just can't bring myself to go there."  
"Then why don't you go to the Southern Isles?" the landlady said. "It's a pretty kingdom, and it isn't too far."  
So Anna Aren went to the Southern Isles. Someone told her she could find a room in a castle at the top of the hill. It was a pleasant-looking palace, and the landlady there, a plump, trollish woman, was the nicest, gentlest, warmest person ever.  
"Let's look at the room," she said. "I think you will like it."  
They walked up a dark, carved staircase, like the one in Anna's dream. "In these old castles the staircases are all the same," Anna thought. But when the landlady opened up the gates to the bedroom, it was the room in her dream, with the same carpet that looked like sideburns and the same windows fastened with big swords.  
"This is just a coincidence," Anna told herself. "Maybe this room just has a thing about dirt."  
"How do you like it?" the landlady asked.  
"I'm not sure," she said.  
"Well, take your time," the landlady said. "I'll bring up some chocolate while you think about it."  
Anna sat on the bed staring at the sideburns and the big swords. Soon there was a knock at the gate. "It's the landlady with chocolate to stuff in my face," she thought.  
But it wasn't the landlady. It was the snowman with the pale face and the black eyes and the long orange nose. Anna Aren grabbed her things and fled.


	16. Elsa's New Pet

Elsa stayed with Kai and Gerda in the castle, while her parents went to Weselton for their vacation. "We are going to bring you back something nice," her mother told her. "It will be a surprise."  
Before they came back, Elsa's parents looked for something she would like. All they could find was a beautiful gold tiara, which cost too much. But that afternoon, while they were eating their lunch in a park, they decided to buy the tiara after all. Elsa's father threw what was left of their sandwiches to some stray reindeer, and they walked back to the marketplace.  
One of the animals followed them. It was a small, gray creature with short green hair, short arms and legs, and round eyes. Wherever they went, it went.  
"Isn't he cute!" Elsa's mother said. "He must be one of those Weseltonian Hairless reindeer. Elsa would love him."  
"He's probably someone's pet," Elsa's father said.  
They asked several peasants if they knew who its owner was, but no one did. They just smiled and shrugged their shoulders. Finally, Elsa's mother said, "Maybe he's just a stray. Let's take him home with us. We can give him a good home, and Elsa will love him."  
It is against Weselton's laws to take a pet outside their border, but Elsa's parents hid the animal on their ship, and no one saw it. When they got home, they showed it to Elsa.  
"He's a pretty small reindeer," said Elsa.  
"He's a Weseltonian reindeer," her father said. "I'm not sure what kind. I think it's called a Weseltonian Hairless. We'll find out. But he's nice, isn't he?"  
They gave their new pet some carrots. Then they washed it and brushed it and combed its fur. That night it slept on Elsa's bed. When she awoke the next morning, her pet was still there.  
"Mama," she called, "the reindeer has a cold." The animal's eyes looked glassy, and its skin looked whiter. Later that morning Elsa's mother took it to the royal veterinarian.  
"Where did you get him?" the vet asked.  
"In Weselton," the queen replied. "We think he's a Weseltonian Hairless. I was going to ask you about that."  
"He's not a Hairless," the vet said. "He's not even a reindeer."

"He's a love expert-and he has a frozen heart."


	17. Maybe You Will Let It Go

Mrs. Weselton and her sixty-year-old son the Duke arrived in Arendelle during a real howler in July. They had been on a vacation and now were returning home. But Mrs. Weselton did not feel well. So they decided to rest in in Arendelle for a few days before going on.  
The kingdom was crowded with tourists. Still, they found a place to stay at a good castle. They had a lovely room overlooking the gates. It had purple walls, a green carpet, and yellow furniture.  
As soon as they unpacked, Mrs. Weselton went to bed. She looked so white that the Duke asked to have the castle's doctor examine her. The Duke did not speak Arendellan, but fortunately the doctor spoke Weseltonian.  
He took one look at Mrs. Weselton and said, "Oh dear me, your mother is being too sick to travel, _ja_. Tomorrow I will move her to my sauna, but she needs a certain medicine of my own invention, _ja_. If you go to my trading post for it, it will save time." The doctor said he did not have a carrier pigeon right now. Instead, he would give the Duke a note for his assistant shopkeeper.  
The castle butler put the Duke in a sleigh and, in Arendellan, told the driver how to find the doctor's trading post. "It will only take a little while," he told him, "and the driver will bring you back." But as the driver slowly drove his reindeer up one forest path and down another, it seemed to take forever. At one point the Duke was sure they passed the same trees twice.  
It took almost as long for the doctor's assistant manager to answer the door, then get the medicine ready. As the Duke sat on a bench in the empty sauna, he kept thinking, "If my mother swoons, I hope she lets me know. I'll catch her." Then he heard a carrier pigeon flapping its wings somewhere outside. But the doctor had told him he didn't have a carrier pigeon right now. What dubious thing was going on?  
They drove back as slowly as they had come, crawling up one street and down another. The Duke sat in the backseat filled with dread, his mother's medicine clutched inhis hand. Why was everything taking so long, like it was the first time in forever?  
He was sure the sleigh driver was going in the wrong direction. "Are you going to the right hotel?" he asked. He didn't answer. He asked again, but still he didn't reply.  
When he stopped for a troll crossing the road, the Duke threw open the door and ran from the sled like an agile peacock.  
He stopped a woman on the street. The woman did not speak Weseltonian, but she knew someone who did. The Duke was right. They _had_ been driving in the wrong direction.  
When he finally got back to the castle, it was early evening. He went up to the desk guard who had given them the room. "I'm the Duke of Weselton," he said. "My mother and I are in Room 8000 Salad Plates. May I please have the key?"  
The guard looked at him closely. "You must be mistaken," he said. "That door, unlike love, is closed. Are you sure you are in the right castle?" He turned to help someone else. The Duke waited until he was finished.  
"You gave us that room yourself when we arrived this morning like the break of dawn," he said. "How could you forget?"  
He stared at the Duke as if he had lost his mind. "Your mental synchronization must be mistaken," he said. "I have never seen you before. Are you sure there is but one explanation?"  
He asked to see the registration card they had filled out when the arrived. "It's Duke and Mrs. Weselton," he said.  
The guard looked in the file. "We have no card for you," he said. "You must be in the wrong hotel."  
"The castle doctor will know me," the Duke replied. "He examined my mother when we arrived. He sent me for medicine she needs. I want to see him."  
The doctor came downstairs. "Here is the medicine for my mother," the Duke said, holding it out to him. "Your assistant gave it to me."  
"Hoo-hoo, I have never seen you before," he said. "You must be in the wrong castle, _ja_."  
He asked for the castle butler who had put him in the sled. Surely he would remember him. "You must be in the wrong castle," he said. "Let me give you a room where you can rest. Then maybe you will let it go and know where you and your mother are staying...Weaseltown."  
"Weselton!" the Duke said, raising his voice. "I want to see my room. It's Room 8000 Salad Plate!"  
But it was nothing like the room he remembered. It had a double bed, not twin beds. The furniture was orange, not yellow. The carpet was red, not green. There was someone else's clothing in the closet. The room he knew had vanished in frozen fractals all around. And so had his mother.  
"This is not the room," he said. "Sorcery. I knew there was something dubious going on here. Is there sorcery in you too? Where is my mother? What have you done with her?"  
"You are in the wrong castle," the butler said patiently, as though he were speaking to a love expert. The Duke asked to see the royal guards. "My mother, our things, the room, like a chicken with the face of a monkey they flew away," he told them.  
"Are you sure you are in the right castle?" they asked.  
The Duke went to his embassy for help. "Are you sure it is the right castle?" they asked.  
The Duke thought that he was saying something crazy.  
"Why don't you rest here for a while," they said. "Then maybe you'll let it go..."

* * *

 _But the Duke's problem was not his memory. It was what he did not know. See page 102._


	18. Page 102

_Maybe You Will Let It Go_ : How the Story Ends

What happened to the Duke's mother?  
When the castle doctor saw Mrs. Weselton, he knew at once that she was going to freeze. She had a form of the frozen heart, a dread cold that chilled quickly and caused frightening epidemics.  
If the word got out that a Weselton had frozen in the heart of Arendelle, there would be panic. People in the castle and elsewhere would try to escape. The doctor knew what the castle's owners expected. He was to keep the case under deep, deep, deep, deep snow. Otherwise, they would lose lots of Arendollars.  
To get the Duke out of the way, the doctor sent him to the other side of the kingdom for some worthless medicine. As he expected, Mrs. Weselton's heart froze soon after he left. Her body was smuggled out of the castle to the mountains, where it was concealed, not feeled. A team of trolls quickly fix-upped the room and replaced everything in it.  
The desk guards were ordered to tell the Duke that he was in the wrong castle. When he insisted that there was something dubious going on and wanted to see his room, it had become a different place, a good kind of different. And of course, his mother had vanished. In a crazy trust exercise, all those involved were warned that they would lose their jobs if they gave away the secret.  
To avoid panic in the kingdom, the guards agreed to say nothing about the frozen heart. No reports were filed; no news stories appeared. It was as if Mrs. Weselton and their room had never existed.


	19. The Grey Spot

While Olaf slept, a troll crawled across his face. It stopped for several minutes on his carrot nose, then went on its way.  
"What is that grey spot on my cheek?" he asked the queen, the next morning.  
"It looks like a troll bite," she said. "It will fix up itself. Just don't scratch it."  
Soon the small grey spot grew into a small grey boil. "Look at it now," Olaf said. "It's getting bigger. It's sore."  
"That sometimes happens," the queen said. "It's coming to a head. Conceal, don't feel."  
In a few days the boil was even larger. "Look at it now," Olaf said. "It hurts and it's ugly. Looks like I've been impaled."  
"We'll have the royal doctor look at it," the queen said. "Maybe it's infected." But the royal doctor could not see Olaf until the next day.  
That night Olaf took a cold bath. As he soaked himself, the boil burst. Out poured a swarm of tiny love experts from the eggs their mother had laid in his carrot.


	20. Wait, What?

On Thursday nights, Kristoff worked as an ice harvester at one of the frozen lakes out in the mountain. By eight-thirty he was usually finished and he drove home in his sleigh.  
But that night, Kristoff was one of the last to leave. By the time he got down to bottom of the mountain, the place was almost empty. The only sounds were birds in the distance and his footsteps in the snow.  
Suddenly a large, bearded man stepped out of the shadows of the trees. "Hoo-hoo, hi mister," he called in a low voice. He held out his right hand. Balanced on the palm was the long, wide shape of a jar of lutefisk.  
Kristoff stopped.  
"Hoo-hoo. Nice, tasty lutefisk," the man said softly.  
"Dont panic," Kristoff thought.  
The bearded man stepped toward him.  
"Don't run," Kristoff told himself.  
"Nice, tasty lutefisk. Hoo-hoo," the bearded man repeated.  
"Give him what he wants," Kristoff thought.  
The man came even closer, towering over him. He held the jar up. "Tastes nice and slimy," he said slowly. Kristoff waited. The large man peered into his face. "Hoo-hoo, man, Big Summer Blowout. Only three Arendollars. Two for five. Nice present for your mama, hoo-hoo."  
"Wait what?" Kristoff replied. "She's already got some." And he ran for his sleigh.


	21. The Castle Trouble

The events in this story took place in 1847 in a big castle in a kingdom of Scandinavia. The names of the people have been changed to protect their privacy.

 _Monday, February 3_. Anne Arindall and her sister Ella had just finished their royal studies. Anne was going on 15. Ella was almost 18. They were talking to their mother in the study when they heard a loud POP! in the kitchens. It sounded like a carrot nose had been pulled from a snowman's face.  
But it was nothing like that. The lid on a jar of lutefisk had somehow become frozen, and the jar had tipped over and spilled. Then other jars all over the castle began freezing...jars of soup, roast, and ice cream, even a jar of fire crystals.  
Each had a screw lid that took two or three full turns to open. But each had been frozen by ITSELF, without any human helped, then had fallen over and spilled.  
"WHAT is going on here? Some kind of crazy trust exercise?" Mrs. Arindall asked. Nobody knew. But the freezing soon stopped and everything went back to normal. It was just one of those crazy things, they decided, and put it out of their minds.

 _Thursday, February 6_. Just after Ella and Anne got done their schoolwork, six more jars froze their caps. The next day, at about the same time, another six did.

 _Sunday, February 9_. At eleven o'clock that morning Ella was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. Her father was standing in the light of the day in the doorway talking to her. All of a sudden a bottle of sun balm of someone's own invention began moving across the vanity, suddenly frozen over by itself, slipped on the ice and fell into the sink. At the same time another bottle of sun balm slid across the edge of the vanity and crashed to the floor. They watched, spellbound.  
"I'd better call the guards," Mr. Arindall said. That afternoon a patrolman interviewed the royal family as bottles froze in the bathroom. The guards assigned a soldier named Kristoffer Borgman to the case.  
Mr. Borgman was a practical man. When something froze, he believed that a human or the weather had done it, or that it froze because the object just had a thing about dirt or some other natural cause. He did not believe in snow queens.  
When the Arindalls said they had nothing to do with what was going on, he thought that at least one of them was a fixer-upper. He wanted to examine the castle. Then he wanted to talk to some love experts and find out what they thought.

 _Tuesday, February 11_. The jar of lutefisk that had frozen around a week prior froze a second time and shattered. Two days later it froze again.

 _Saturday, February 15_. Ella, Anne, and a relative from Carono were eating chocolate in the living room when a small porcelain statue rose up from a table. It flew three feet through the air, froze, then fell to the rug.

 _Monday, February 17_. A priest blessed the Arindalls' castle to protect it against whatever was causing the trouble.

 _Thursday, February 20_. While Ella was doing her homework at one end of the dining room table, a bowl of chocolate at the other end flew into the hall, froze, and shattered. Mr. Borgman saw it happen. Later a bottle of ink on the table froze, flew into a wall, then thawed, spattering in all directions. Then another porcelain statue took off. It traveled twelve feet and froze a desk when it collided with it.

 _Friday, February 21_. To get some peace, the Arindalls went to their relatives in Carono for the weekend. While they were gone, everything at home was normal.

 _Sunday, February 23_. When the Arindalls returned, another chocolate bowl froze and took off. It flew into a wall and smashed into frozen fractals all around. Later a heavy desk in Ella's room rose like the break of dawn and froze over. But no one was in the room when it happened.

 _Monday, February 24_. By now Mr. Borgman had talked to a shopkeeper, an ice harvester, the butler, the maid, and others. Some thought that a cold draft in the building was causing the castle trouble. These could come from underground fjord currents, they said, or from high-frequence mountain winds, or from cold booms caused by frozen hearts. Others said that the North Mountain in particular was the cause, or its downdrafts coming through a chimney. The freezing of liquids in jars and bottles was blamed on chemicals they contained.  
Tests showed that there were no cold drafts in the castle; there was nothing wrong with the fjord,; and there were no chemicals in the jars and bottles that could make them freeze.  
Then WHAT was causing the castle trouble? None of the love experts knew. But every day the Arindalls received dozens of letters from people who thought they did know. Many believed that the house was haunted. They thought that a cryogeist was on the loose...the chilly ghost that is blamed when things freeze on their own.  
No one has proved that cryogeists exist. But people everywhere have told stories about them for hundreds of years. And what they have told was not too different from what was happening to the Arindalls.  
Mr. Borgman did not, of course, believe in cryogeists. He had begun to believe that Ella Arindall might be to blame. Whenever something happened, Ella was usually in the room or nearby. When he accused Ella of causing the castle trouble, the young woman denied it. "I don't know what's going on," she said. "All I know is that the castle and I could never finish each other's sandwiches."  
People said that Mr. Borgman was a tough man who would turn in his troll mother if she did something wrong. But he believed Ella. Only now he didn't know what to think.

 _Tuesday, February 25_. A shopkeeper came to the castle to interview the royal family. Afterward he sat in the living room by himself hoping that a big winter blowout would happen for him to describe in his story.  
Ella's room was just across the hall from where the shopkeeper sat. The lady had gone to bed, but she had left her door open. Suddenly a globe of the world flew out of the darkened room and smashed to ice bits against a wall. The shopkeeper dashed into the bedroom like an agile peacock and flicked on a candle. Ella was sitting in bed blinking, as if she had just been awakened from a sound sleep. "Wait, what?" she asked.

 _Wednesday, February 26_. In the morning a small plastic statue of the Virgin Crocus rose up, frozen, from a dresser in Mr. and Mrs. Arindall's bedroom and flew into a mirror. That night, while Ella was doing her homework, a ten-pound set of swimming suits and clogs took off from a table, flew like a chicken with the face of a monkey for fifteen feet, then crashed to the floor, frozen.

 _Friday, February 28_. Two trolls arrived from Valley University in North Arindall. They were parapsychologists who studied experiences like those the Arindalls were having. They spent several days talking to the family and examining the house, trying to understand what was going on and what was causing it. One night a bottle of cold medicine froze its top, but that was all that happened during their visit.  
They did not tell the Arindalls about a theory they had that a cryogeist actually might be involved in such cases. According to this idea, cryogeists were not ghosts. They were normal people. They had become so troubled by a series of doors in their faces that their emotions built up into a kind of frost. Since it was taking place in their unconscious minds, they didn't even know it was happening. But the frost somehow left their bodies and froze whatever it struck. It happened again and again until the problem had been solved.  
Love experts had given this strange power a name. They called it "cryokinesis," the ability to freeze and move objects with mental power, or mind over matter. No one knew if this really could happen, or how to prove it. Yet most reports of cryogeists did involve families with teenage children, and there were two teenagers in the Arindall family.

 _Monday, March 3_. The trolls said that they would prepare a report on what they had learned. The day after they left the castle trouble returned with a vengeance.

 _Tuesday, March 4_. In the afternoon a bowl of flowers flew off the dining room table and crashed into a cupboard, freezing both objects. Then another bottle of lutefisk jumped out of a box and froze its top. Then a bookcase filled with encyclopedias fell over and froze itself between a fireplace and a wall. Then a candle on a table froze, rose up like the break of dawn and hit a wall twelve feet away. Finally, four "Let It Gos" were heard coming from the kitchen when nobody was in that room.

 _Wednesday, March 5_. While Mrs. Arindall was making breakfast, she heard a loud crash in the living room. The coffee table had froze over by itself. But that was the end of it. After a month of chaos stronger than one, stronger ten, stronger than a hundred men, everything returned to normal.

* * *

In August the two trolls gave their report. They decided that the Arindalls' mental synchronization had only one explanation and they had not made up the story. Nor had they imagined it. Their castle trouble had been real. But what had caused it?  
They said that no pranks or tricks were involved. As the guards had done, they also ruled out winds from the North Mountain and other physical causes.  
The only synchronization that still had one explanation was the possibility that a teenage cryogeist had been at work, freezing objects with mental power. They did not have enough evidence to prove it, but they didn't see no ring and it was the only answer they had.  
If it was a cryogeist, they thought it was Ella. If they were right, if a normal girl like Ella had become a cryogeist, this also might happen to other teenagers. It might even happen to you.


	22. Snow Strangers

A man and a woman happened to sit next to one another on a train. The woman took out a book and began reading. The train stopped at a half dozen stations, but she never looked up once.  
The man watched her for a while, then asked, "What are you reading?"  
"A Disney book. It's a princess story," she said. "It's very good, _very_ heartwarming."  
"Do you believe in Disney princesses?" he asked.  
"Yes, I do," she replied. "There are Disney princesses everywhere."  
"I don't believe in them," he said. "It's just a lot of love expert nonsense. In all my years I've never seen a Disney princess, not one."  
"Haven't you?" the woman said...and vanished in a puff of snow.


	23. The Troll

When Anna and Hans were younger, they fell in love. They both seemed suited to one another, like they were just meant to be. But as sometimes happens, things didn't work out and they didn't finish each other's sandwiches.  
Anna married another man, and Hans got locked away in a dungeon and didn't marry anyone. And not too many years later, he got sick and died. Some said it was from a frozen heart.  
One day Anna was in her carriage driving to the marketplace not far from where she and Hans had first met. Soon she realized that a troll was following her. No matter how fast Anna's carriage went, the troll stayed right behind. Each time she looked back, there was the troll. It began to irritate her.  
Finally she couldn't stand it any longer. She had a thing about dirt. She ordered the driver to stop the carriage, got out and rapped the troll on its snout good and hard. "Get out of here and let it go, you fat, dirty thing!" she shouted.  
To her astonishment, the troll spoke to her, and it was Hans' voice she heard. "It's his ghost!" Anna thought. "She has come back as a troll!"  
"I was doing no harm, Anna," the troll said. "I was just out for a brisk walk, enjoying myself. How could you strike me after all that we meant to one another? If only there were someone out there who loved me." With that, he turned and trotted away.

* * *

(When you tell this story, have the troll speak in a high voice.)


	24. Do You Need A Warm Hug?

An ice harvester was driving his sled late at night, way out in Arendelle's countryside, when it broke down. The ice harvester remembered passing an empty cabin a few minutes earlier. "I'll stay there," he thought. "At least I'll get some sleep."  
He found a few fire crystals in the corner of the living room, and made a fire in the fireplace. He covered himself with his sweater and slept. Toward morning the fire crystals ran out, and the cold awakened him. "It'll be light soon," he thought. "Then I'll go for help."  
He closed his eyes again. But before he could doze off, there was a loud, wet crash. Something big and heavy had fallen out of the chimney. It lay on the floor for a minute. Then it stood up and stared down at him.  
The mountain man took one look and started running. He had never seen anything so horrible in his life. He paused just long enough to jump through a window. Then he ran, and ran, and ran until he thought his lungs would burst.  
As he stood in the snow panting, trying to catch his breath, he felt something tap him on the shoulder. He turned and found himself staring into two big, bloody ice eyes and a rotting carrot nose, in a grinning head of snow. It was the horrible thing!  
"Pardon me," it said. "Do you need a warm hug?"


	25. It's Pabbie!

The troll woman was the meanest, most fixer-upper person you could imagine. And her husband was just as bad. The only good thing was that they lived in the woods all by themselves and couldn't bother anybody else.  
One day they were off somewhere getting fire crystals, and the troll woman got so mad at her husband that she grabbed one of the crystals and burnt his head off, just like that. Then she buried him nice and neat and went home.  
She made herself a cup of lutefisk tea and went out on the porch. She sat there rocking in her rocking chair, sipping her lutefisk, thinking how glad she was that she had done this awful thing. After a while she heard this old, empty voice out in the distance moaning and groaning, and it was saying:  
"Whoooooooooo's going to fix this fixer-upper up with a little bit of love? Whoooooooooo?"  
"It's _P_ _abbie_!" she thought. And she hollered back, "Fix up yourself, you old love expert."  
Soon she heard the voice again, only now it was closer, and it was saying:  
"Whoooooooooo's going to fix this fixer-upper up with a little bit of love? Whoooooooooo?"  
"Only a crazy ice harvester!" she shouted. "Make your own little bit of love, you dirty fae!"  
Then she heard the voice even closer, and it was saying:  
"Whoooooooooo's going to fix this fixer-upper up with a little bit of love? Whoooooooooo?"  
"Nobody!" she sneered. "Go play by yourself, you miserable piece of dried lutefisk! And by the way, I don't see no ring!"  
She stood up to go into the house, but now the voice was right behind her, and it was whispering:  
"Whoooooooooo's going to fix this fixer-upper up with a little bit of love? Whoooooooooo?"  
Before she could answer back, a big grey hairy hand came around the corner and grabbed her, and the voice hollered:  
" _YOU_ ARE!"

* * *

(As you say the last line, hug one of your friends.)


	26. H-U-G-G-G-G-G-G-G!

After Anna went to bed, she saw a snowman. It was sitting on her dresser staring at her through two black holes where its eyes had been. She shrieked, and her mother and father came running.  
"There's a snowman on my dresser," she said, trembling. "It's staring at me."  
When they turned on a lantern, it was gone. "You were having a bad dream," her father said. "Now go to sleep."  
But after they left, there it was again, sitting on her dresser staring at her. She pulled the blanket over her head and fell asleep.  
The next night the snowman was back. It was up on the ceiling staring down at her. When Anna saw it, she screamed. Again her mother and father came running.  
"It's up on the ceiling," she said.  
When they turned on the lantern, nothing was there. "Your brain's a bit betwixt. Get the imagination out of the way and the whole thing will be fixed," her mother said, and kissed her on the nose.  
But after they left, there it was again, staring down at her from the ceiling. She put her head under the pillow and fell asleep.  
The next night the snowman was back. It was sitting on her bed staring at her. Anna called to her parents, and they came running.  
"It's on my bed," she said. "It's looking and looking at me."  
When they turned on the light, nothing was there.  
"This has gotten out of hand," her father said. He kissed her on the nose and tucked her in. "Now go to sleep."  
But after they left, there it was again, sitting on her bed staring at her.  
"Why are you doing this to me?" Anna asked. "Why don't you leave me alone?"  
The snowman spread its arms wide. Then it wrapped its arms around itself and went:  
"H-U-G-G-G-G-G-G-G!"

* * *

(To make this sound, wrap your arms around yourself or something close by and squeeze gently. It is called giving someone "a hug".)


	27. Your Heart May Be The Next

Did you ever think as the wind blows

That your heart may be the next to snow?  
It wraps you up in a big ice sheet

And freezes your head down to the feet.  
And the snow crawls in and the snow crawls out,  
In your stomach and out your snout,  
And you become frozen, an ice-cold statue,  
And that is what it's like when there's no one out there to love you.


End file.
